How do you make travel more accessible?

Episode 4 of the Re:Design podcast, hosted by Mima, titled "How do you make travel more accessible?" was published on November 22, 2023 and runs 40 minutes.

November 22, 2023 ·40m · Re:Design

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Summary

A billion people - that’s 15% of the world’s population - live with some sort of disability, so ensuring equal access to travel is not just simply the right thing to do not just from an ethical standpoint but it’s also just good business. From temporary and permanent disabilities to impairments to speech, vision, hearing, communication, sensory processing, and physical limitations such as people who require walking aids and wheelchair users, there is a significant and growing need for accessible travel. In this episode we speak to two fascinating guests, Jenny Mclaughlin, a Project Manager at Heathrow Airport working on the Airside / Landside Delivery team currently working on the Kilo Apron Development (KAD) project, and also Martin Heng, Internationally recognised accessibility travel expert who previously worked at Lonely Planet for 20 years, first as an Editorial Manager and then became as their first Accessible Travel Manager.

Episode Description

In this episode we speak to two fascinating guests, Jenny Mclaughlin, a Project Manager at Heathrow Airport working on the Airside / Landside Delivery team currently working on the Kilo Apron Development (KAD) project, and also Martin Heng, Internationally recognised accessibility travel expert who previously worked at Lonely Planet for 20 years, first as an Editorial Manager and then became as their first Accessible Travel Manager.

We break down what accessible travel can look like for different people, Jenny discusses projects she's worked on including the Inclusive Design Overlay project and the Umbrella Project, as well as discussing Heathrow’s ‘Open to All’ 2019 paper - the biggest report into passengers and why they hadn’t travelled.

Martin shares how his travel experiences changed after an accident in 2010 making him a wheelchair user, how he created and maintains the world’s largest collection of Accessible Travel Online Resources, featured in the UNWTO’s Good Practices in the Accessible Tourism Supply Chain, and also discusses the business-case for making travel accessible for all, with examples of those who have done this already.

We finally discuss the future of travel and what they envisage it to look like for everyone. Find out how instead of expecting people to adapt to the world, we can make efforts to adapt the world to the people who live in it.